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Commentary

Women STILL Hate Wall Street - Just When They Need It Most

Many years after some of the nation’s largest financial services firms set out to win business from Boomer women, we’re still in a spot where little has actually changed.
Like a chauvinistic boss who thinks his resistant female employees will finally respond if he just keeps trying, the industry’s attempts to charm women assumes that simply wanting to succeed
will get them to respond differently. Well, it hasn’t worked.

Will a new set of tools – digital newcomers, robo-advisors, online communities, and more personalized
initiatives – change that outcome? It’s too soon to tell.

Marketing is part of the problem. Over the years, financial service firms have used just about every marketing tool available to turn women
off.

As only one example, consider all the imagery that shows women in a dependent posture towards men, such as standing behind them or leaning against them. Most women are
insulted by such imagery because they take charge of their family’s finances as they age. But that’s not all: Others – including one out of three Boomer women who are widowed
or divorced – were saddened by the unnecessary reminder of their losses.

These are some of the reasons that a recent survey by Next Avenue confirmed that only 10% of
women believe Wall Street pays as much attention to women as to men and 71% of women say that financial firms are not in touch with women’s real needs and concerns.

It
would be easy to write yet another blog post on the changes that would make women feel more respect from Wall Street, but it turns out that feeling disrespect isn’t the only thing keeping women
from entrusting her financial future into the hands of Wall Street.

Wall Street itself is part of the problem

Structural problems have worsened
women’s distrust. Women understand that most financial advice is riddled with conflicts of interest. Insurance companies want to sell insurance, brokerage firms want to sell stock, and no Wall
Street firm seems to take an interest in customers first. Ninety-one percent of women recently reported that financial firms are more interested in selling them than educating them.

It’s not even clear if Wall Street and women agree on their ultimate goals. Financial firms seem focused on selling “success” even though women tell us that they seek
financial security first. Firms also seem more interested in shaming rather than empowering women when the statements women hear from advisors make them feel at risk: “You aren’t going to
be ready for retirement.” These statements don’t provide support—if anything they make women want to run the other way.

Can technology answer women’s
financial needs?

A new generation of startups is tackling this challenge with technology using digital tools to put the power of planning for the future back into the hands of
women themselves.

Some of these technologies work as robo-advisors—digital investment managers that manage your money according to a plan you approve. Worth FM, an
offshoot of financial published Daily Worth, is only one example. Others include GoldBean, SheCapital, and Ellevest.

Then there are digital tools that provide custom financial
advice without trying to invest your money. Examples include Learnvest—purchased in 2015 by Northwestern Mutual—and SUM180. SUM180—launched with input from Vibrant Nation
Bloggers—provides each subscriber with only the three next best steps for that individual to take based on exactly where she is on her own financial journey. Founder and CEO, Carla Dearing, says
the three-step plan is “more like Weight Watchers than Morgan Stanley.”

Conclusion

I don’t know whether women will ultimately want a
different tool than the tools men use for managing money, but I do know that products and services that work for women usually end up pleasing men, too.

Data confirms that
digital tools can solve problems that traditional industries cannot figure out by themselves, just like taxis can never be useful in the way that Uber is. The financial industry faces stereotypes and
internal conflicts that have made most women hate it; which is why the industry may need to reevaluate an entirely new way of engaging women. It can’t hurt to try.

5 comments about "Women STILL Hate Wall Street - Just When They Need It Most".

Stephen is on the mark as usual. However, little understanding of how to connect better with women has spread far beyond Wall Street as evidenced by many surveys, reports and whitepapers on the subject.

Sadly, your observations are just as relevant today as they were in 2009. Womenkind has been working with innovative financial insitutions for the last eight years to help them undertstand and better serve the finanical needs of women. And here're what we know: women have very different finacial goals than men. Part of it is demographics - women outlive men and earn less over a lifetime than they do; so the way they mange money has an entriley different end game. Meanwhile, women control more wealth than man -- a figure that is rapidly approaching 60%.

Consider that a global study by BCG revealed that financial services are is the one consumer industry women are most dissatified with. Couple i with the fact that more than three-quarters of women consider themselves the CFO of the home, and fit's easy to calculate how much revenue financial service brands are letting go untapped.

Women have been told and still told and believe they are not good with money. Learning about money is boring. Dependency, and not just with money, runs rampant. Where the disconnect is is that too many women do not think they need it, whether they like it or not. We have also lost the teaching of money in public schools, as in mandatory classes in money and finance from piggy banks through compound interest to 12th grade. The approach, the tactics and strategies must change. Robo stuff does not do it. It is not about the tools; step one has yet to be accomplished. There is no vision or the will to invest as in take their own advise. The financial world needs to go back to pre-school. Although it will take a few years to turn the tide, it will be immense.

Great point about financial literacy and education. I agree with its importance, but also feel that the education can happen at the same time as the management. Nutritional education is part of learning how to lose weight, but Weight Watchers manages to get people doing both at the same time. I've seen it in the lives of real people, and we see it working at the startup our research informed: www.sum180.com